The Toyota Probox Dx

Toyota Probox Dx

The Toyota Probox DX, the stripper version, is the backbone of the Yangon taxi industry.  And taxis make up 37% of all vehicles.  To be more precise, taxis make up 37% of vehicles (plus or minus 5%, 19 times out of 20) during the morning rush hour on U Wisara Road.  Adjusting loosely for a bias in the timing of my sampling, taxies are not less than 25% of the car fleet here.

I am puzzled by the enormous number of taxis.  It may be a symptom of a rising middle class that would rather not use the old and often very full public busses, but hasn’t reached the stage of private car ownership.  The benefit for a foreigner is obvious.  Ready availability of cheap rides.

The car fleet is relatively new.  I would guess the average age of vehicles is 7 or 8 years.  This is a major benefit in terms of smog.  Cuba with way less vehicles manages to choke you with ill-adjusted carbureted engines and no-filter diesels.  Yangon’s fleet expanded rapidly in the last four years, after the lifting of a punitive import duty.  Japan’s second hand car market is the main supplier, hence the overwhelming market share of Toyota and the prevalence of computerized fuel injection systems.

The traffic in Yangon is pretty easy to understand; less easy to navigate.  The key principle is to take every opportunity to enhance your position in the melee, even if that means using part of the oncoming lane to reach an improved standing in the queue.  Changing lanes is mostly done by presenting the vehicles in the other lanes with an increasingly hard to ignore fact.  First, you stick your nose a little bit into the next lane, which will lead to the cars there to squeeze by you while riding their horn.  And is there is a bit a gap, you nose further until the drivers in the other lane do not have enough room anymore to get around you.  They will honk, but admit defeat.

The Teashop Wait Staff

The Teashop Wait Staff 

The wait staff at the burmese restaurant (or teashop in the local parlance) where I have lunch are young boys and girls.  I see them there when I am on my way to work in the morning and a see them when I leave at night.  It is full time job and they are good at it.  They work with an efficient nonchalance that only comes with time. They have been waiting tables for a while and they do it with gusto.

 They are also children, between 13 and 17 years old.  Sometimes, they break out in play between the tables and often they sing a song while bringing you tea.  They are overseen by a 20-year old, who sometimes barks at them in a loud voice when the service is not prompt enough.  Or at least I think he barks at them.  All orders are yelled back to the kitchen and as the restaurant is open to the street, it takes a bit to be heard.

They were obviously pleased when I asked to take their picture.  As all children, they goofed around in front of the camera.  They have bright smiles, and quick hands and are quick to calculate the luncheon tally.

It is also child labour.  Maybe not of the kind of kids tied to their loom, but child labour nonetheless.  These kids do not go to school and do not play games with their buddies.  They spend a good part of their childhood working and because they work, their families have a bit more income.  All wait staff in teashops are young, I don't know what happens to them when they grow up.

So what do you do with that?  There is little ambiguity: the signs and what they signify are pretty clear.  My fellow diners and I are complicit, as are all the diners in all the teashops in Yangon and beyond.  And every street corner has a teashop.  Pretty clear as well is that the firm application of child labour laws would lead to misery for the kids and their family.  There are simply no educational alternatives for my wait staff and no limited income opportunities for their families in the short term.  There is at least a discussion about the small percentage of state spending that goes to education.

  Development is complicated and childhood in poverty is short.

Harder to signify is the large presence of young boys and girls among the Buddhist monks and nuns.  Some cannot be older than eight or 10 years.

The Median of U Wisara

The Median of U Wisara 

U Wisara is a main thoroughfare that is part of the key north-south traffic flow in Yangon.  It is a four lane road with a broad treed median. Pyay is another north-south road and Pyay is another story altogether.  My street, San Kone Lane or Road or Street, all seem to work, runs between U Wisara and Pyay.

The van that shuttles me and other NAG workers to and from work picks me up at U Wisara.  The timing is somewhere between 8:00 and 8:30, but if the traffic is bad, it could be later.  I am getting to know my corner of U Wisara and San Kone quite well.

There are fellow workers waiting to be picked up by their, what is referred to in Burmese English as, ferries.  And some people are discharged for the big business centre across the street.  Mostly vans, but there is a bank that runs a small bus.  Factories run small trucks with benches along the truck bed.

One intriguing aspect of U Wisara is the young woman who regularly sweeps the median, which is covered with a kind of broad-leaved grass.  She has a kind of corn broom, an old cement bag on a string around her shoulder and a light blue dustpan to pick up the detritus.  She has a bright orange safety vest, which identifies her in my mind as a municipal worker.  Her yield is low, just some twigs and a few leaves from the trees on the median. 

The intrigue lies in the why.  Yangon is a clean city compared to New Delhi and Calcutta, but garbage is never far from sight.  Littering is almost inevitable in the absence of garbage cans.  And many streets, but not U Wisara, are informal places of business with small sidewalk cafes and vendors of this, that, and other things.  Part of the answer lies, I think, in what I observed in an older women who came out of a gate onto U Wisara yesterday.  She made a small gesture of worship towards Swedagon Pagoda, which can be seen at the end of U Wisara.  It was like the genuflection of believers crossing in front of an altar in a Catholic church.  My street sweeper companion is a secular nod to the divine in a city full of monks.

Changing Myanmar and Cuso

Changing Myanmar and Cuso

Poor Myanmar has had it rough for a long time.  The military grabbed power and took the country on a “Burmese Road to Socialism. Change was possible in the popular uprising of 1988, but the hard-liner of what became the State Law and Order Restoration Council or SLORC --  you have to love that name -  took over and kept on the road to ruin for another 20 years.  And that includes harsh reprisals against monk-led protests in 2007 and an almost complete failure to respond to the devastation wrought by cyclone Nargis in 2008.  It left over 130,000 people dead in the low-lying delta.

Personal interlude: The non-governmental agency that I am supporting finds its origins in the civil society response to Nargis.  What is now Network Activities Group started out as Nargis Activities Group.  I took the ferry over to Dalah, across the river from downtown Yangon.  It is a rural-residential area with many houses built with bamboo mats.  A rickshaw driver toured me around and showed how high the water had risen during Nargis. There were very few few brick or concrete buildings on which to find a place above the water

.

Things are looking up since, say, 2010: cessation of censorship, some liberalization of the economy, and cease fire negotiations with the many separatist movements.  The elections in 2010 were seen by many as flawed, but they and subsequent by-elections created a multi-party bi-cameral parliament, with, among others, Aung San Suu Kyi as a member.  And yes, 25% of seats in parliament are reserved for appointees of the military.

Parliament is trying to find its feet.  Debates are lively and, as I have been told by someone who could know, even the military appointees are drawn into the spirited debates.  It is, however, hampered by lack of funding, research support, and experience.  A couple of months ago the 330 members of the lower house had one photocopier between them.

 

Personal interlude: CUSO, the organization that is sending me here, has a substantial commitment to support parliament and civil society organizations that work towards deepening democracy here:

Three of my colleagues run language and research skills training for parliamentary staff. 

Another colleague is writing a brief that Equality Myanmar, a think tank, will submit to a UN body, discussing the progress (or lack thereof) of Myanmar’s treatment of vulnerable groups, including the LGBT community. 

Two colleagues are supporting EGRESS, an organization with a youth policy focus, with research and proposal writing prowess.

My task is to further NAG’s ability to monitor its programs.  Most of these revolve around mobilizing village-level groups of vulnerable households with a view of increasing food security and incomes in the context of economic and political awareness raising.

So what is the point of these ruminations?  That there is a CLICK HERE button right above this post. It gets you to my fundraising page, which is really Cuso’s fund raising page.  Canucks, push the button, will you!